Shards of Glass
by Jettatura
Summary: The trauma was finally buried deep, shoveled beneath years of happy rule and not to ever be brought up again. The White Witch was defeated. The Pevensies could and would rule in peace. Or so it seemed. IN LONG, COLD, DEAD STORAGE
1. Lucy's Dolor

_And as Aslan shakes his mane, we shall have spring again._

The equinox was fast approaching, visible now in how the ice of the river's thick water was fragmenting. If you were to sit quiet enough, you could even hear the last glimmers of shimmering ice as they dripped leisurely from the bushes and peaks; trees abruptly shivering to cast away the droplets as they splattered on sweet, sun-drying bark. Bears and squirrels were slowly beginning to reveal themselves once more, chippering about to greet those neighbors sorely missed whilst weary and travel exhausted but sprightly birds loitered in huddles about the sky.

The world was changing all at once, once again, always; a scene so beatific and enticing that it was a wonder anyone could ever grow tired of it, of the magic in the air. But that was just how she was beginning to feel, tired. So much had happened, continued to happen, and at such a frightening pace in her life that she pondered now how she could ever have been so very excitable even thirteen long years ago.

Those happy days of wonder and exploring seemed so very far away now, as the young queen wasted away her twenty-first birthday trekking alongside the calm shores of Narnia's clearest river. After all, it would make no difference whether she was here or there, Lucy argued with herself as she watched the palest flickers of fish flitting about below the fissure-woven ice of the river top. 'Twas not as if either way there would be another to celebrate with her. Not that she was so vain she craved the attention, of course. It was just... being queen wasn't exactly what she'd thought it would be.

Oh, when was the last time she could have played hid and seek? So soon was she deemed too old. How long ago was it she had last done something because she wished to, not to uphold some Narnian tradition set before the Witch's reign? Dancing with the Dryads; healing foolish soldiers who saw themselves courageous enough, skillful enough, to fight for their world alone; calming the hysterical; representing a proud face of Narnia. What about family? What about long nights with friends and the most dreadfully scary adventures taken with Peter, Susan and Edmund?

"Sure, I might end up the coward," the young queen bit viciously to herself, startling the cub who had been following her curiously, "but I had fun, and I had my family..." Stopping to crouch at the water's edge and fold her slender arms around the deep burgundy skirt of her dress, Lucy sighed, "What have I now?"

The sky was a searing orange, burning a sparkling reflection in the girl's wide, sad eyes. Nightfall would be arriving within the hour, judging by the pacely movements of the sun across the clear evening sky, but if Lucy had any great hopes of getting back to Cair Paravel before such lighting fell she did not show it. Instead, she cast her eyes upon the far end of the river, allowing her mind to slowly revisit the long years when Mr. and Mrs. Beaver had once held a dam there, before and little while after it was torn apart by the White Witch's wolves, fixed by Santa Clause only to be destroyed once again by mutinous followers of the defeated dictator. Where they'd relocated to now even she did not know, only Peter and Edmund as far as she was aware. Something to do with their not wanting her to wander off to try to visit them all the time. Them protecting her, like always.

Imagine, two twenty-something kings who still played Hide-and-go-Seek on command protecting a queen. Lucy laughed, but only fleetingly before her attention focused once more upon her disappearing friends. She'd not seen Mr. Beaver since Christmas, at least, and his wife and somewhat recent kids in even longer.

Was she that easily forgotten? Or had her family simply amounted to the prophecy to them? Had the plan always been to send four naive kids up against a witch of ages and then abandon them? Surely that had to be wrong, he was their friend. Mr. Beaver was their companion, one of the best, he would never have done such a thing to them, would he?

Who really knows? Maybe he would have, Lucy seethed as she rubbed her eye vehemently with the palm of her hand, light hair swinging forward. Oh, but when did things become so utterly complicated? So out of her control?

Aslan had abandoned her as well, how could she have forgotten? The lion that crowned her queen and never yet returned. Another creature she had thought to be her friend, had trusted so easily. She had wept of his dead body upon the stone table! Who listened to the lion better, trusted him more than she? And yet he still left her.

She helped him, all of them. Mr. Beaver with his dreams that were more important, apparently, than her family in the long run. The stupid king of a lion to take his Narnia back, and every other wretched creature who pestered her and her siblings for help along the way.

How could she have refused them? So young, so willing, so eager to aid in any possible way.

But that was before everything started changing so drastically. Before the adventures slowly diminished until they disappeared in entirety; before the Beavers moved away to a place apparently unsafe for "_Dear Little Lucy_" to wander about; before Susan, Peter and Edmund became less and less of who they were; before the stupid lion left without even saying a simple goodbye; before Mr. Tumnus started to die. Yeah, before Tumnus began to fade away.

Leaning back onto the palms of her hands so that she could swing her legs out to the left of her, Lucy pulled out her crystalline cordial of fireflower juice, fondling it carefully before angrily tossing it aside. "Why can't you cure illness? It you could just... just _fix _him, everything would be alright. It has to be."

But no matter how long she sat there afterwords, clenching the roots of her hair in the fading light, the cordial would not respond, and she knew, however grudgingly, that it never could. And after a few moments of silently observing this foreign distress, the young cub--a light brown in the sunlight but merely a shadowy and distant black in the near darkness--spoke softly from his position a yard away from her hunched figure, "Your Majesty?"

Lucy, startled, quickly disguised her very obvious distress, unsheathing her glistening dagger at the same instant as she grabbed for her cordial and shot to her feet. "Who is out there?"

Stepping cautiously into the dim light reflected off of the river bed, the cub spoke in his same soft tune, "Only Tirmous, Highness, from Cair Paravel. The High King wished I be sure you get home."

The young queen sighed, recognizing the cubs familiar presence and began to walk in the direction of the great castle with a sad shake of her head. She was setting her belongings back into their respective pouches when she felt the bear's heat following alongside her.

* * *

A/N: This is my first true fanfiction and I understand if it's horrible, truly. It's for my one friend, and another wanted me to have an account here because she thought it more productive, I suppose. That's how my Fictionpress is, at least.

Feedback is lovely, though.


	2. A Brother's Beleaguer

The last hesitant rays of icterical orange and violet were fading fast from Aslan's soothing sky as Edmund Pevensie set down his quill once again and shot his gaze to glance nervously through the elegant window frame beside him. He was to meet with the new chief of the centaurs upon the early dawns of the next day to both assure he felt welcome in Edmund's family's Narnia and to study the newly empowered character's strategies. He should have been making ways to bed so that he might manage to be at least grudgingly awake in time to collect himself properly in the morning. Times of peace, for a king, after all tended to drag begrudgingly, each day a new mess of respectable wardrobe to best preserve ones honor, but he wouldn't give it up for the world.

Sleep however, as he had been scolded to do several times already by his older brother, eluded him craftily, as if cursed with the ail of a fishing line, gently but intransigently tugging against the routine current it chose, as he was graced once more with a vision of the clear night sky, illuminating the land about Cair Paravel, devoid still of Lucy trekking naively across the sleeping soils of the mingled criticaster and faint-hearted. How anyone could expect otherwise was beyond him. To sleep when his sister had passed through the protective realms of Cair Paravel and proceeded to have gone missing well into the night--surely that had to be a sin? What if something had happened to her? What if he was needed?

They were dancing through times of peace, anyways. Certainly it would not matter if so tedious a meeting as the traditional welcoming of the new chief of centaurs was deferred to a later date because a Queen was missing. How could he be expected to think properly during the affair, anyhow, when his mind would clearly be filled with worry over his sister? If it was postponed then at least it could be done properly, without a distracted king running amok in the midst of it all.

Letting a stream of hot air flow from his nostrils calmingly, the dark-haired King stood from his perch within the illecebrous depths of the castle's library, every towering shelf filled to the brim with volumes thick and thin, packed together to fit within the darkened ledges for ones perusal. It was amazing to him, more couthy and comforting than nearly any other stretch in Narnia altogether, but with Lucy now missing it's charms seemed entirely neutralized. The aphotic fathoms, normally such a succor for sadness, served now only to remind him just how darker and harsher a place his sibling may have stumbled into.

Times of peace or not, no world was ever perfectly safe. Just _safer_, in most regions.

It was dark after all, what if Lucy had lost her way? What if she were to meander about to the Northern Giants? She could say as often as she liked about how she was able to take care of herself and ready to go off somewhere, but she had never killed anybody. She had no idea, she would hesitate, and what could possibly make another party do the same? There was so much she simply didn't know.

All the same , what was there for him to do? He was not Peter, after all, and he would never run out to search for her in lieu of a plan admittedly not yet created but with the great plausibility of being superior to simply demanding scared creatures show him to his sister and killing anything--or attempting to--that might have hurt her. If he could just think what to do in the form of finding her.

He massaged harshly at his temples now with his two foremost fingers and thumb as he paced hurriedly back and forth, a drumming beat pounding pervasively within his ears and soon accompanied by yellow specks of flickering light appearing and disappearing rhythmically before his tired eyes with each new thumping of his own pulse, reboant and deafening within his own head. What did it take to formulate a plan of action? It was never so hard when he was helping Peter with war strategies, or how to go about reforming Narnia through laws. Those always seemed to come to him so naturally, so by Aslan why was it so hard to think of a way to be sure his sister was safe? The last thing he wanted was to have her killed on her twenty-first birthday.

Edmund Pevensie may have been two years older than his fairly light haired sister, but he was by no means anywhere near as naive as her and far from ready to let her go.

The wind whistled in through the window as a soft breeze swirling a few leaves about in a weak flurry as he mulled his worry over at different angles inside his contemplative head, causing him to quickly veer his unblinking gaze towards it in the hopes that it may have been a tree spirit bearing news of his sister. When the leaves fell limp to the floor, simply severed bits from a noble tree with no information to murmur, with the letting up of the soft breeze, Edmund slumped down to the floor, back pressed against the cold cobble of the wall below the window, and dropped his head to his knees in saturnine defeat.

It was in that hunched and morose position in which he also drifted slowly off to sleep, twitching eyelids lifted a fragment of an inch from his trouser-clad legs and ears alert to any sound above the softest decibels. And it was in that position he stayed, resting fitfully for a rough measure of three hours before he was awakened by the low resounding padding of paws traipsing along the smooth floors of his home. Clawed paws, accompanied with the harsher pounding of a human consort, hurrying along the halls in negligence to the sound she created as she rushed to her chambers in the hopes of avoiding whatever speech any of her siblings may have prepared for her. Rushing away from the corridors nearest the High King's lodgings.

Edmund simply smiled to himself, relieved by the sound of Tirmous's familiar footsteps watching over his sister, before crawling over to the far end of the library and peaking through the door out to the hallway. Reassured by his sisters fumbling, streaky steps--clouded over by her vivacious and naive attributes even as she hoped to avoid detection--Edmund slipped away quietly to his own room for what little proper sleep he still had any hopes of attaining.

And the following morning, as Queen Lucy snuggled inexorably into the warmth of her soft sheets, head buried fiercely underneath one cushiony pillow, Edmund joined his elder brother wearily before the doors of Cair Paravel to welcome the oncoming coterie of centaurs into their home, yawning boldly as he rubbed away at his tired eyes.

* * *

The length shrank, I know. I had to type it on my laptop instead of my computer as that got fried for some reason or another after I wrote it all today for feeling I'd neglected it.

It's also a bit of a very big filler, and it's only the second increment, but I felt it necessary, so...


	3. Melancholy Royals

The conference room of Cair Paravel was built to entertain many. It's walls boasted riches and exuberance accustomed to the royals now living within its protective lands. It was not unusual, therefore, to find a large party within its sectors, whether for felicitous celebrations, opulent dances, or else heavily-mattered meetings. As the reigning High King over Narnia, Peter was used to his. he had no choice but to be, called upon for an appearance at nearly every event.

He was well adjusted to the power and the role he was condemned to play, lest he be smote by the legions of Narnians he dared not, at times, call his friends. But then again, he was nearly thirty years old--only two more years until the time should pass. It was no longer any wonder to him how easily everything was to him, for he had quite simply allowed himself to forget how it was before.

On occasion, the King would find himself moaning something terrible in his sleep, tossing and turning violently in time with a story Susan told and retold to her siblings. It was a short enough story, hardly given its greatest potential due to Susan's less than defined storytelling skills, but one that she could not seem to forget--and nor could his conscience, for that matter. She spoke of a mother whose husband had been called upon to fight in a great war in which nearly every land of some foreign world became involved. Rather than noble combat and swords, these men were supplied with horrific boxes filled with mixtures designed to explode instantly on contact with the ground, and were used against civilians as well as soldiers. She narrated a picture of men hiding in holes dug deep into the dirt and alternately running blindly, knowingly, at small, metal stones of death that sliced through the air from unimaginable weaponry to kill anyone they touched.

There were gases that suffocated people as they coated the ground and brought about the most excruciating of traumas, and in one land she told even of the soldiers being killed by their own. That anyone who should turn back from that would be met with a metal stone, spiralling from their leaders own hand.

She told it every week, once a week. Without fail, she would whisper to her family terrifying accounts of bloodshed and slaughter while they played with their disregard Saturday morning breakfast. Every so often, minuscule details would change, it would focus on the mother who'd had to send her children away and was now utterly alone.

She was the greatest wonder to Peter: the mother. However Susan managed to get this story into her head, she could never describe the mother, never seem to know the first thinga bout her other than her current quagmire. Except, when put under questioning, she would describe every house, every plane, every soldier and every weapon down to the most minute detail. And Peter, though he could never allow himself to admit his night terrors to his siblings, foudn that he knew perfectly well what she looked like.

Every time he jolted awake, coated in a thick sweat, sheets sticking adamantly to his slick skin, there was an image of a girl etched into his mind. Elder enough to have wrinkles forming, worn locks of brown hair--he knew her perfectly. And, Peter knew, it was her. But he had sworn himself against every mentioning it to his siblings for, as intrigued as he was certain they must become, it was not in his nature to willfully admit that he may need help--especially in understanding his own mind!--so quickly. It was the job of the elder brother to help and protect his siblings, and he found he had quite a hard time letting that go.

Due to another of these dreams, however, did Peter find himself yawning nearly enough to challenge even Edmund beside him, who had stayed awake the course of the night to watch for Lucy. Both were far too exhausted to reprimand the other for not having attained proper sleep or inquire as to why he had not and was now looking right stupid, if not insolent, before the party of Centaurs.

Both, it seemed, had been counting upon the other to be alert and carry along with the meeting when they discovered themselves ill-prepared for the event. When they discovered the failure that plan of action was quickly morphing to (and after Edmund had found himself nudged roughly awake from a dose by his brother), the two men begged sleepily of their party to pause for a few moments and desperately begged Susan to take their place.

The exchange was not done without question, and the two brothers were expected to remain in the room with the party, but the Centuars warmly welcomed Susan, whose heavy heart was easily concealed by having been the only Pevensie to acquire a proper amount of sleep the previous night.

Edmund, despite his present company, soon found himself drifting off once more into the soothing realms of sleep from which his brother did not again disturb him.

The High King was not so lucky. He was afraid to close his eyes in front of a company for fear he should go beyond resting and enter the stygian of sleep that plagued him, only to be awoken by one of the party with the mother's figure still perfectly delineated in his mind. All the same, he could not enjoy the traditional welcome held for the Centuar as greatly as he once may have, a heavy stone set over his chest and pressing deeply upon his sternum.

It had been a long while since he had enjoyed these events witht the same heart he once had, and he couldn't quite figure out just why.

The gaiety of Cair Paravel seem to have been draining for quite some time and, while Rigamof was far too engulfed in his proceedings with the gentle Queen Susan to notice, every other Centuar within the comitatus seemed to sense the mixed emotions flowing from each of the royals. The despair, the despondency, the detachment...

Many from the deluge of visitors shuffled towards the side wall furthest from their majesties, so as to pretend they had never picked up on such a thing and that, in moving themselves as far away from the three they could see, they could pretend they were not able to feel it. Others hashed about ideas as to what could possibly tear a part their rulers so ferociously. A few still walked closer towards the Kings, showing their respect though their leader may have been clueless.

Edmund, snoring softly, remained oblivious to it all; as did Peter, staring contemplatively through a large window. Only Susan watched their movement curiously as she blithely walked through the tradition with Rigamof, who was clearly excited enough for the whole room. When she finally had the chance o pass another during her painful dialogue with the Centuar, she questioned him, "What are you all doing?"

He couldn't think of a decent answer.

* * *

February, March, April... Three months? Really? ...exactly three months, at that. But, I am here, updating and alive, for anyone whose still actualy interested in here (so very unlikely, I know. That's my fault).

I've been overloaded with homework as of late, and honestly, I have a different story that I really want to get to work as it's for my best friend. Which really isn't fair to this, I know, but just plotting it, I'm in love with the story (though I really do hate plotting and so it's taking a wretched long time).

Honestly though, this is probably just a load of shit. (Both the excuses and the story--if any specification is needed.) I finally sat down to write this increment only about two hours ago, determined to finally update and write the thing. Only, I sort of became stumped a short ways in and had to really forced the ending--I know it reads horribly, but I really couldn't think what to do. And I know in the last two I promised it would get longer, but, well...

When I actually get into the storyline, it should be better. (You can believe that or not, I won't think worse of you.)


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